I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. My broad research interests include; climate change and environmental change, sustainability of human and natural systems, socio-ecological vulnerability, and climate change impacts on agriculture and human health.
I hold an MS in Geospatial Science degree from the University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama and a BS in Environmental Science degree from Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya. I have previously conducted research on climate change effects on maize productivity in Kenya, urban heat island effect in Nairobi, spatial analysis of maize yield patterns in Central Malawi among other projects. My previous research has been published in Remote Sensing, Atmosphere and Geocarto International.
I spent two and a half years working for a Nairobi-based non-governmental organization (NGO). The organization implements education projects in primary schools in rural (western, Nyanza and central Kenya) and informal (slums of Mathare, Nairobi) areas. Over the past five years in graduate school, I have worked as a teaching assistant (TA) for physical geography (weather and climate), quantitative methods for geographers and GIS classes. I have also taught as an instructor of record for two online introductory GIS classes. I am currently a research assistant (RA) mostly using GIS, remote sensing and programming (R, Python, and some Java) in studying climate change effects on agriculture (in Michigan), environmental conflicts (in Africa) and characterizing spatio-temporal occurrence of heat wave events in the United States.
I also spent the summer of 2018 interning at Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN. Here, I was involved in the Building Outlines Project and my tasks revolved around: (i) exploring existing tools for extracting feature outlines from imagery; (ii) refining the existing algorithm for feature extraction, and; (iii) validating and verifying the outputs from different algorithms. Back in 2016-2017, I interned for a utility company for one year. During this internship, I worked on collecting utility data (water and gas lines, water meters and sewers) in the field using GPS gadgets, documented and processed the data to improve the existing GIS database. I also created maps to assist utility field officers. To find my full profile, please review my CV available here.
I spent two and a half years working for a Nairobi-based non-governmental organization (NGO). The organization implements education projects in primary schools in rural (western, Nyanza and central Kenya) and informal (slums of Mathare, Nairobi) areas. Over the past five years in graduate school, I have worked as a teaching assistant (TA) for physical geography (weather and climate), quantitative methods for geographers and GIS classes. I have also taught as an instructor of record for two online introductory GIS classes. I am currently a research assistant (RA) mostly using GIS, remote sensing and programming (R, Python, and some Java) in studying climate change effects on agriculture (in Michigan), environmental conflicts (in Africa) and characterizing spatio-temporal occurrence of heat wave events in the United States.
I also spent the summer of 2018 interning at Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN. Here, I was involved in the Building Outlines Project and my tasks revolved around: (i) exploring existing tools for extracting feature outlines from imagery; (ii) refining the existing algorithm for feature extraction, and; (iii) validating and verifying the outputs from different algorithms. Back in 2016-2017, I interned for a utility company for one year. During this internship, I worked on collecting utility data (water and gas lines, water meters and sewers) in the field using GPS gadgets, documented and processed the data to improve the existing GIS database. I also created maps to assist utility field officers. To find my full profile, please review my CV available here.